Fabric Ireland drive bridges Border divide

The white-and-gold embossed cards for Thursday night's launch of the Fabric Ireland initiative in Paris will be collectors' items. Never before have the Irish and British national symbols appeared on the same invitation. The Irish Ambassador, Mr Patrick O'Connor, had never co-hosted a reception with his British counterpart, Sir Michael Jay.

The £390,000 (#495,200) initiative, which establishes an umbrella promotional label for wool and linen from both sides of the Border, was several years in the making. It survived the ups and downs of the Northern Ireland peace process; organisers wanted to invite Northern and Southern trade ministers, Sir Reg Empey and Ms Mary Harney. But the collapse of the Northern Ireland executive last month prevented that. Businessmen, it seems, are ahead of the politicians.

All of the principal wool and linen weavers in Ireland - four from the North and five from the South - are participating in the initiative. The industry is worth £80 million each year, about 75 per cent from exports.

The weavers have put up a third of the programme costs themselves. The business promotion bodies, Enterprise Ireland and the Industrial Development Board for Northern Ireland, financed another third, and the remaining third was given by the International Fund for Ireland, whose contributors include the US, the EU, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

"This is the first time we have put together an island-wide initiative for an industry," said Mr Jim Maguire, the director of Enterprise Ireland's Paris office. He believes the promotion can be a model for other sectors present on both sides of the Border, for example crystal and aeronautics.

Northern weavers did not hesitate to team up with their colleagues in the Republic. For one thing, Fabric Ireland gives them the benefit of Enterprise Ireland's 30 offices around the world. "They're more than happy because Irish linen and tweed are synonymous with quality. They see the advantage of the Irish label," Mr Maguire said. "I was a little hesitant to suggest the Irish Ambassador's residence as a venue for the launch," he admitted. "But I was surprised by their enthusiasm - I haven't come across any reticence."

The Northern and Southern fabric industries complement one another more than they compete. Nearly all are family-owned. Historically, Northern Irish weavers made linen, Southern weavers wool - although most now make both. The Northerners produce high volume at lower prices. "The small companies in the Republic can use the Northerners' marketing and infrastructure, while the big companies learn from the design innovation and creativity in the South," said Ms Rose Mary Craig of Enterprise Ireland.

The twice annual Premiere Vision fabric show near Paris provided the occasion for the launch. At the end of the opening day, Irish weavers and many of the European and North American designers who are their clients gathered at Ambassador O'Connor's residence.

Ms Eileen Fisher, who has 15 designer shops across the US, was there to find fabric for her next collection. She recently dispatched one of her designers to Ireland to promote washable, no-iron linen. "It's a whole different attitude towards linen," she says. "The more you wash it, the softer it becomes. It gives a nice rumpled look." Last year, Ms Fisher bought 120,000 yards of Irish linen from Emblem Weavers, Baird McNutt and Ulster Weavers. I found her chatting with Mr Jim Conway and his son Stephen, owners of Wexford-based Emblem, who sold her nearly 70,000 yards of handkerchief linen in late 1999. "Eileen is our first customer in the US," Mr Conway said. After six difficult years because of the Japanese crisis and competition from east European and Chinese textile makers, the fabric industry is looking up, he said. A major Japanese department store chain had just placed a big order with him.

Several years ago, Enterprise Ireland invited the Premiere Vision organisers to Dublin. "They said, `Irish fabrics are great, but you don't do enough to tell the world about it'," Mr Maguire recalled. In a survey, buyers praised the service, punctuality and prices of Irish suppliers, but they found them lacking in innovation and creativity. That is how Fabric Ireland was born. The group's first move was to hire a designer to work with each of the nine member weavers to develop new products.

"People used to say that if you wanted innovation you had to go to Italy," Ms Linda MacHugh, the director of the Hillsborough-based Irish Linen Guild, said. She is project manager for Fabric Ireland. "We encouraged weavers to change, for example by making lighter weight wool. We wanted to get rid of the shamrocks and leprechaun image." Waterproof linen shown by Ulster Weavers - ideal for raincoats - attracted a great deal of attention at Premiere Vision.